we don't even realize how much of a police state the united states has become a former cia officer who blew the whistle on america's torture program and is now waiting to serve two and a half years in prison to talk started t. about what he believes is behind the sentence. as the french stop its military operation in mali a success we bring you some chilling stories from the three week long battle against islamist. syria is threatening to retaliate for an israeli air strike on its territory while its ally iran says they'll be repercussions over the attack. it's three pm in moscow six am in washington your wants in our team with me and he

said now a former cia officer turned whistle blower sentenced to two and a half years behind bars is waiting to start his jail time john kiran curiosity i should say was the first official to publicly confirm the agency's use of waterboarding and condemn it as torture and he was convicted for revealing a covert officer's identity to a journalist although in one of his final interviews before being locked away he tells r.t. his crime was simply speaking out against the government. first of all my case was not about leaking my case was about torture when i blew the whistle on torture in december of two thousand and seven the justice to department here in the united states began investigating me and never stopped investigating me until they were able to patch together. charge and force me into taking a plea agreement and i'll add another thing to when i took the plea in october of last year the judge said that she thought the plea was was fair and appropriate but

once the courtroom was packed full of reporters last friday she decided that it was not long enough and if she had had. errors in this post nine eleven atmosphere that we find ourselves in we have been losing our civil liberties incrementally over the last decade to the point where we don't even realize how much of a police state the united states has become you know ten years ago the thought of the national security agency spying on american citizens and intercepting their emails would have been anathema to americans and now it's just a part of normal business. the idea that that our government would be using drone aircraft to assassinate american citizens who have never seen the inside of a courtroom who have never been charged with a crime and have not had due process which is their constitutional right would have been unthinkable and it's something now that happens every every so often every few

weeks every few months and there is no public outrage i think this is a very dangerous development but john kiriakou was also a guest on abbe martin's breaking the sand here in our tea don't miss the extensive interview details of the case and its implications throughout the day. do you think that the real people who oversaw codified torture john yoo alberto gonzales and donald rumsfeld shouldn't they be the ones sitting in prison john think they should be the ones and there are others even if you just put aside the people who actually did the day to day torture what about the people who conceived of the policy and who implemented the policy were the attorneys that papered over it with with crazed legal analysis or the man who who destroyed evidence of the torture in the tapes.

france's telling its military mission against islamist rebels in mali a success but three week long intervention has also created more havoc in the conflict torn country and some chilling stories are emerging as local reporter gonzalo wanted told r.t. . ever thought that out of one of us as betty ellis the war became a real nightmare for the people of this small city in the sago region it was one of the first places bombed by french warplanes before more jihadist arrived sweeping south towards the capital bamako the french intervention left a pile of debris and ashes that's just the visible traces of the war they left it civilians who were left with the scars that will last a lifetime one family paid a deep price for this conflict against the islamist terrorists one of the family sons was killed by a jihadist soldier inside his own home let it be later when my brother was attacked

by a group of militants the ridge children among them he started running and got back into our house but they followed him one of the children fired at him but missed and then another insurgent shot him inside the house my brother fell and was riddled with bullets we laid his body in the house we couldn't bury him because we were afraid to go outside. if they just me this is just one example of the terror that the conflict is putting mali and civilians through plague and the weakest the most no one was surprised when india bali once jihadist troops arrived it was discovered that the majority of the military were heavily armed child soldiers. the french back mali and gulf. they accused of atrocities during the conflict with the rebels on r t dot com you can see an exclusive report on this as well as images allegedly showing evidence of war crimes by the troops and we also have more stories from people on the ground about hate how they are living through the

western led battle against islamists. u.s. president barack obama has picked for the country's next defense secretary has gone out of his way to persuade the senate he's the right man for the job when attacks from his previous views and statements at the confirmation hearing took a gold made it clear he will act in accordance with white house policies if his candidacy is approved are going to can listen to the session which brought some heated discussion but little hope of change. chuck hagel bent backwards to show how mainstream his views are the senators kept accusing him of not being mainstream enough and they kept using the word mainstream over and over again during this hearing chuck hagel has walked back on a number of positions he had taken earlier he kept apologizing again and again and chuck hagel went to great lengths to show that he is in no way going to challenge washington's core foreign policy beliefs as one of the senators put it it was quite an exhausting hearing considering the senators were asking almost the same

questions and roughly eighty percent of them had to do with chuck hagel previous statements on israel and iran there was so much mentioning of israel that at some point they were confirming him as secretary of defense for israel i couldn't count how many times he said all options are on the table with regards to iran again and again saying a strike on iran is an option an option that he had previously called irresponsible by the way here's what chuck hagel kept repeating throughout the hearing get the united nations behind you get the international sanctions behind you keep military options on the table if the military option is the only option it's the only option one of the senators pointed out during the hearing that in a private conversation senator hagel recently told him that he thought sanctions didn't work and previously chuck hagel voted against sanctions but today's chuck hagel as we found out during this hearing is for sanctions to those who believe mr haye go was in favor of direct negotiations with iran as he had previously claimed

he was he offered a correction a very vague one he tried to blur his response as much as he could here's what he said i don't have a problem with engaging i think great powers engaging in gauge mint is clearly in our interest that's not negotiation engagement is not appeasement engagement is not sure under so no direct negotiations with iran here's another example of how chuck hagel had to walk back on some of his praise. statements at one time he said and this has become a famous quote the political reality is that the jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here i've always argued against some of the dumb things they do because i don't think it's in the interest of is world and of quote here's chuck hagel during this confirmation hearing he noted that i. thought i should have used another term and i'm sorry and i regret i mean do your use of intimidation. i should have used influence. i think would have been more appropriate i should

not have said dumb or stupid. because i understand appreciate there are different views in these things it was like torture watching the hearing because it seemed as if the senators were not there to question chuck hagel but they were there to break him because they kept going back to his previous statements and pushing and pushing until he said what they wanted to hear and he did it so whoever thought chuck hagel was going to offer a new outlook on u.s. foreign policy after this hearing would seriously doubt that. now we're always interested in your view on the topics we're covering head to r.t. dot com and vote today in our online poll let us know what you think hegel stance on iran and why it has become more hawkish here's some of the choices that we've put up for you the first is perhaps now it is a viable a viable bet that iran will be struck that it's been

a genuine change in position perhaps it's a ploy to counter that criticism of being anti israeli or does it not matter at all he won't have any influence on iran policy maybe lastly is it proving his very own claim that no one can in fact stand up to the jewish lobby let's take a look at how opinions are divided so far about half of our viewers that have voted think that it doesn't fact prove the israeli lobby power how strong it is haggles given it a third of so say it makes no difference around twenty percent a little less than that say that is a ploy to counter the criticism that he's anti israeli and the smallest amount of voting that it's a genuine change in stance like i said head on to our to dot com and vote today we want to know what you think on this issue now whatever prompted the change in hay goes rhetoric clearly there's been a difference many experts believe even if he wants to change u.s.

forest foreign policy he'll struggle to do so. when president obama was elected in two thousand and a we you know the same kind of hope to ms and was there with a shutting down get mo and ending these wars and fighting the right kind of wars but then we find out when you know after the deal is done after the elections are over the nomination process is over we continue with our war footing around the world no matter what the politicians come before those cameras and tell you what the key factors are that we need to take care of it be a social safety nets or the economy or or jobs being created in this country the united states will always have money for two things you can be rest assured bakers and bullets we already see the headlines coming out. the mainstream media talking about the sequester and how this is going to get our military we will have nonstop propaganda being a bombarded out of the people the fear of reducing the budget of the military so i'm absolutely confident that whoever a secretary of defense will have a very very loose pocket book to spend to keep spinning us into having

a rocket carrying a communication satellite has fallen into the pacific ocean shortly after blasting off from a sea based launch site and it's reported the rocket went off course immediately after takeoff r.t.s. you've got to get off reports. these rockets were u.s. communications satellite on board blasted off from the odyssey floating platform but to went off course almost immediately and its engines were switched off and it did into the pacific somewhere along the equator less than a minute after takeoff now on the equator the earth's rotation speed provides an additional booster rocket so they could carry more weight when it comes to launching from floating platforms besides looking awesome there are advantages and disadvantages like there's a minimal risk of rockets falling down on inhabited areas but waves could be a problem in fact there's speculation that that could have been the case the start

is a collaboration between russia in their gear and to us boring companies they've been working together since one thousand nine hundred five thirty four successful launches well this was supposed to be the first launch in two thousand and thirteen still ahead for you this hour the catholic church in germany loses worshippers that have more and more alleged cases of child abuse by priests in the headline. we report on the risks of genetically modified food but why it's made producers might not have anything to worry about that and more after a break. well . it's technology innovation all the moves developments from around russia we've got the future covered. sometimes you see

a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything is. welcome to the big picture. me is he. in the. government no longer represents the. people who are going to take the term.

revolution in the traditional little along. the way our economic system. is not. going to. lead mission free accreditation street. store charges three.

three. three. three. three blown video for your media project a free media don carty dot com. wealthy british science it's time to let her go. to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy is a report on our team. coming up to seventeen minutes past the hour here in moscow here with our team syria and iran are threatening to retaliate against israel for a rare air strike on syrian territory syria claims israeli warplanes hit

a military research center near damascus killing two well the u.s. says the jets targeted a military convoy heading from neighboring lebanon artie's paul the slayer is monitoring developments from tel aviv. the syrian ambassador to lebanon did say that it was not clear when ever tell you would happen and that it was up to the powers that be to decide on such decisive action but he did say that it was an option and that it was and would be a surprise now the iranian foreign minister has also stated that this is radio attack has serious implications for the israeli city of tel aviv and those are indeed quite harsh warnings what we understand from syria from syrian sources is that the israelis hit a research center not far from the capital city of damascus and that at least two unsigned workers were killed there are also reports that the strike hit a convoy of weapons that was making its way from syria to lebanon and now

washington reportedly was warned by israel of its intention to strike inside syria this kind of comment coming from a high ranking american official who has spoken on condition that he not be named it is important to mention that a couple of months ago iran's revolutionary guard did say that assad had friends in the region who had not yet entered the fray the quote was that these planes were poised to strike out in case there was an intervention in syria but we have no comment yet from television also has been no comment from washington moscow has said if indeed these raids did strike inside syrian territory it is a gross violation of the united nations charter iranian academic and political analyst mohammad marandi says israel should take iran's warning of repercussions seriously. but it's important is that the united states knew about their strike before hand they did nothing about it the european union as usual so is silent

about it there is no condemnation for killing syrians two for bombing the country for of course iran will defend syrian sovereignty the iranians have many means to hurt the israelis and to punish the israelis it doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be involved directly they could. support. countries or bodies that could make life for israelis more difficult now to other international news this hour a bomb blast in northwestern town that has killed at least nine people and injured over thirty outside a mosque in the town of hangal according to local media the attack took place as worshippers were exiting after friday prayers no group has said says it carried out the attack the town of hangal is close to pakistan semi autonomous tribal region with a strong taliban and al qaeda presence. an explosion has killed

twenty five people and left more than one hundred injured at the mexico city headquarters of pemex the state owned oil company the figures have been confirmed on the company's twitter account some people reportedly remain trapped inside the building local media say a gas leak may have caused the blast in september an explosion at the company's natural gas facility in north mexico left thirty people that. government opposition in egypt is calling for further mass protests on friday that's despite reaching an agreement with the muslim brotherhood to renounce violence at demonstrations across the country the condemnation came at a meeting attended by government officials as well as heads of liberal and secular opposition movements at least sixty people have been killed in demonstrations marking the second anniversary of president mubarak's. and a standoff between police and a man holding a five year old child hostage in a bunker in rural alabama has entered its fourth day the boy was taken earlier this

week when a gunman shot dead a school bus driver after he refused to let the youngster off the vehicle this is directed kidnapper is a retired sixty five year old truck driver the boy is apparently on. in germany the catholic church has dropped an independent investigation into child abuse allegations the accusations came to light in twenty ten and resulted in a drastic decline in the number of worshippers attending church you may find some of the details in peter all over report disturbing. the abuse of trust the destruction of faith the sift of innocence. in one hundred seventy nine i was invited to his house he locked the doors and forced me to drink what i now know was alcohol. he asked me what i thought of his penis which was

a wrecked then the priest made me perform oral sex on him. the catholic church in germany is facing a crisis attendances dropped significantly over the past few years according to the central committee of german catholics one hundred eighty thousand parishioners stopped going to mass in twenty ten alone many citing church hierarchy unwillingness to do enough about claims of abuse like the ones made by wilfred the priest at the center of this particular scandal is now being moved to a different parish while this church where its alleged abuses took place remains closed to worshippers but just how difficult is it to bring a criminal prosecution in cases like this if those people go to court now it's very difficult to get to a sentence because the witnesses sometimes died in between the memory has got lost and so those attempts to get to have

a trial usually fail christine pfeiffer had been in charge of an extensive study into abuse in the german catholic church dating back as far as nineteen forty five his research claims that the church destroyed files on priests involved in abuse up to ten years also that twelve hundred victims were paid hush money not to reveal what happened to them he was dismissed after a dispute with a senior cleric over what information would be made public the scandal that this research is no not going to be finished. is causing problems to them as well now they're losing members because of the new headlines of the last few weeks there are those within the church that recognise the importance of transparency if lapsed catholics not to be brought back into the flock. a woman. thing and when we do not make things clear there will always be enough that something has been covered up

this will home attempts to get people into church because it is about from vision for trust and all belief is based on trust. for wilfrid the trust has been lost he says he will never set foot to the church a good he's committed to getting compensation for himself and those others who claim they were abused by people who were supposed to be in a position of responsibility peter all of the r.c. germany there's more news for you online including on guard that's riyad ledge of the martial law urging its army to prepare for war head to argue dot com to see if the korean peninsula is on the brink of a military conflict. was internet users be where millions of devices are now in danger of being an easy pick for hackers due to a phone for malfunction that's been known about for some time.

activists have protested outside a shareholder meeting at the headquarters of one of america's notorious genetically modified food producers monsanto protest monsanto protesters i should say demanded more transparency in the company's labeling research and business practices that's amid concerns over the safety of g.m. crops but adam evening or chair holder in monsanto believes as long as such companies financially support politicians and the risks could be brushed under the carpet. these chemicals may be what's causing higher rates of cancer in industrialized nations nations across the globe we note that it caused tumors in rats that were fed in long term food studies last year i was it will speak during

the meeting and this meeting is closed to the public and we one of the things are asking for is in the future this dispute live streamed people around the world care about what's going into the food they may not want to own monsanto stock i only bought the stock so i could speak at the shareholder meeting the company knows already about there are genetically modified crops which many say food activists believe make us more reliant on herbicides and chemicals that the company also sells the genome companies give heed massive donations to politicians on an annual basis they are very active in the political system so by spending tens of millions of dollars even hundreds of millions of dollars on elections. that it's not the politicians are not going to prioritize rejecting crops peter the valves here in a couple of minutes with the latest edition of cross talk.

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and enjoy your favorite. if you're away from your television or it just doesn't matter now with your mobile device you can watch on t.v. anytime anywhere. please. hello and welcome to cross talk or all things are considered i'm peter lavelle on forgetting iraq largely ignored by the media mainstream iraq is faced with a number of serious fault lines growing authoritarianism corruption separatism and political fragmentation this can hardly be the legacy washington wanted but it formally ended military occupation on top of this. that debt appears to be crafting

its own not a western form pulse. to cross talk iraq i'm joined by pepe escobar and some paolo he is a journalist and author in london we have sami ramadani he is the senior lecturer in sociology at london metropolitan university and in jerusalem we crossed amir javedanfar he is a middle east expert right gentlemen cross talk cross in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want pepe escobar friend go to you first how would you describe iraq today because it's i notice something you wrote not too long ago it's going to drop out of mainstream media story nobody is really interested in but there are a lot of fault lines as i mentioned in the introduction yes absolutely first let's put the whole situation to complex peter this is the biggest manmade humanitarian disaster or our times period nothing compares to it it's one point two you rock one point two million iraqis that least dead killed that rectally or

indirectly by the vision and occupation over five million refugees there was a cultural cleansing of iraq as well intellectuals were killed libraries were looted museums were looted the country was balkanized it became a gigantic are you all right i mean i guess we'll get to all of these topics related to all of these topics or hang on but why is it out of the media spotlight . because i know florida it's one of america to conduct the bring you know game from the bring you washington in fact and conduct live soul searching of why this thing happened in iraq in has been happening for three years in fact seen since the early ninety's it's absolutely unbearable you have to imagine the effects of the un us sanctions during the clinton administration you have to study even they have to go wars you have to study the effects of shock and

awe why shock and awe was a strategy concocted to be ok. it's very interesting to the problem. nobody wants to do this in american war well maybe because nobody wants to talk about iraq and syria in the same sentence sami where do you came out on this what's going on in iraq right now well i think i do agree with. some asian of the consequences of the iraq occupation u.s. led occupation and in fact it's a common mistake to say that the occupation of iraq has completely and it i think the occupation has left a lot of fingers in the iraqi scene and iraqi society and there is still quite a strong powerful american presence for their direct or indirect through some of the iraqi political forces the scene in iraq is quite disastrous in addition to

what they said iraq is experiencing syria's internal haemorrhage goes by the occupation which transformed variation differences between people who are these differences are religious ethnic sect type differences differences that many societies have but when differences elevated to animosity i'm friction and blood. this is where the occupation added to the iraqi mosaic. galvan eyes that all the extreme forces reactionary forces and society in such a way that they have enormously weakened iraqi society there is also one one thing which is quite important and doesn't hit the news headlines which is the what i call the silent type killings and deaths in iraq for example

water sewage gets thrown into the rivers because of lack of electricity this is causing water borne diseases hundreds of thousands of children are falling victim to quite serious water diseases the they have the state health service has collapsed that decay tional system has almost collapse with with some serious defects unemployment is over fifty percent of the adult population. part of the occupation supporters propaganda was to help iraqi women while iraqi women don't dare walk the streets at night so all together the occupation is still a living phenomenon i let me jump in here with you jordan offered by the media mayor look pretty bleak picture there mayor very bleak. a

very bleak picture and fortunately what we're seeing is that iraq is after syria if not already it's already becoming an area where great powers in the region are trying to weaken iran i personally don't think it's a great mystery that we're seeing all these sunni demonstrations in sunni parts of iraq these days. you know that iraq iran's competitors in the region we should be mainly saudi arabia and the persian gulf countries they see runs hand is weakening in syria they see a link between iran iraq and syria now they're going after iran's influence in iraq and now we see that there has been recently demonstrations in sunni areas of iraq and according to human rights watch has been great abuses of human rights mine and i never go in happens to deny any of these things would have been happen would have happened if there weren't the invasion had happened right i mean iraq was one country before me in a hundred nine grassley rate well i'm sure it's not

a hand they say is out way well i can say it i could be wrong but i can say it happy what do you think well out there for a lot of papeete then ok ok i like to wear our like to add to both our guest said which is absolutely correct by the the way. initial in polls of after shock and awe. by the absolutely in famous a coalition provisional authority was stupid to soon is that going to this was the way to balkanize the country at the same time a ground zero of disaster capitalism and you have to divide and subdivide the populations so they applied more or less the lebanese model so it was assumed as against shiites and sunnis shiites and kurds all fighting against each other and this is what happened nowadays the country for all practical purposes formerly iraq is totally balkanized if you go to the mountains in iraqi kurdistan is another

police it's like the caucasus already has nothing to do with them as i put them in planes if you go to the solves the shiites live in more or less apart from back that includes you except the oil industry which is centered in basra which is control of course by baghdad and it's now exporting as much as it was exporting during saddam and then you'll have the triangle of death the sunni triangle province west of baghdad where we have. a simmering i would see this is there's a simmering civil war in fact against this shiite dominated government in baghdad. which is consider like a new saddam or a new dictator there are nuances to that in many aspects yes in some aspects not at all but the problem is he has a very good relationship with i would say the military dictatorship of the military out as i describe it in tehran and also good relations with syria and with

hezbollah as well don't forget that moloch you spent a lot of his exile years in damascus so this is very important and the sunni triangle some quote men there is dead were part of that war against the americans in this sunni triangle they'd be they crisscross the border. because the border between iraq and syria that part isn't is there is not a border i was just there somewhere right back in the lake because when we go back to jerusalem i think man let me go back to trying to destabilize the syrian i come in that ok go ahead sami jumping go ahead then we'll go to jerusalem go ahead sam yeah i think there is. there is a bit of a simplification there regarding so never says she saw i think this is highly highly oversimplified i mean very few people might be abroad know that outside of iraq that all iraqi tribes not a single tribe is not mixed sunni shia so leaders of the tribe are responsible for

both shia and sunni most iraqi cities have presence of both both sects so to to depict this scene as a conflict between shia and sunni oversimplifies the situation there are a sectarian political parties that use ethnicity use sack to use the religion to further their nest if you like but the communities in iraq there is no actual street street level animosity between these sects and religions and this has been a characteristic of iraq for many hundreds of years where there isn't a history there has never been a history of kwame in a conflict there's been a history of this state of free jeems or pressing this ethnicity like the kurdish people or pressing the shia hour or is this for me what i want i want to go to jerusalem before we go to the break here. is iraq a failed state or becoming

a failed state. i don't think i don't think iraq is a failed state i think he rocks as many problems but i don't think it is a failed state and i just want to point out your previous point peter you make it sound like that the sunni shiite problem in iraq only came about after the u.s. invasion as much as on the. warrant such he was railing sciri did i will say was massacring kurds say was massacring shiites so i think you're pretty but it was a sovereign country and it was a sovereign country that's the difference. it was a sovereign country but he was still killing the different six we're not in washington in the making wasn't like he said to place well how about. something that's been happening for many years ok pepe jump in before we go to the saddam hussein was using saudi money to invade iran which is a shiite country of course it was hugo has been chanting look everybody has

a very good point in this discussion in terms of the oversimplification i agree in fact who wants to oversimplification the americans because as long as the peace soon is against shiites they have a perfect excuse to be in baghdad in that the vatican size embassy all right let me hear we're going to go with your straight where you don't chartering chances and after that your purple continue our discussion on iraq stay with r.t. .

choose your language. calling me kevin though if you're going to say sell some other. treatments that is the consensus get. to the opinions that invigorating to. choose the stories good in life choose access to your office.

well see british science. it's time to. go. to. market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cancer the no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to the report on our. mission. could you take three years for charges three. months three. three. three. year old free broadcast live video for your media project free media r t v dot com.

please. welcome back to cross all things are considered on peter lavelle to mind you were talking about what's happening in iraq today. ok during the break sami said you want to jump in so go right ahead yes i think in trying to specify what the u.s. led occupation did in iraq and how it destroyed iraq one is not trying to say that saddam's regime was a bad offer oses. dictatorship the thaws a dictatorship that killed many thousands of people with wage then i get water if i get action against iran et cetera et cetera but the people who are most people in iraq who are.